Chapter 50 #2
Sabine closed her eyes, bowing her head as if to accept a blow on both their behalf.
“I told myself that running would only get us both killed. I thought I could convince the Registry to dissolve the vow instead. But in truth, I was too scared to defy the Crown. I watched her die, Sabine. I sat by her bed and counted the days until the Fade was done, and when it was, the Emperor gave me a pin for my loyalty.” He laughed, the sound flayed and hollow. “He called me a perfect weapon.”
Sabine moved to him. She reached for his hands and took them in hers.
Her fingertips pressed firmly into his palms. For a moment, he braced himself for judgment.
But Sabine’s expression, when she met his gaze, was not the least bit distant.
She looked at him with a clarity that made his heart stumble.
“You were little more than a child. They made you choose between impossible things.” She shook her head, strands of hair catching in the candlelight, her mouth set in a fierce line. “If I had been in your place, I don’t know that I would have done any differently.”
He tried to laugh, but the sound stuck in his throat. “You would’ve run. You would’ve built a raft from pure defiance and sailed her to the edge of the world.”
Sabine’s lips quirked. “Perhaps. Or perhaps I’d have hesitated, too. That’s what they breed us for, isn’t it? To hesitate, to weigh, to obey. Even when every part of you is screaming to do otherwise.” She squeezed his hands. “But that’s not who you are now.”
The words rattled him more than any rebuke would have. She looked at him as if she was cataloging every injury that had been stitched into his marrow, every shard of terror that had shaped him.
“I swore I’d never let it happen again. Not to anyone else I cared about.”
She traced the map of calluses at the base of his thumb. “You’ve proven your loyalty to me a hundred times over, Azrian. You do not owe me penance for the past.”
“But at least now you understand. Why I could never just leave you behind.” He leaned forward, pressing his forehead to hers, the words snagging in his throat until he forced them out. “I won’t make that mistake again. Not with you.”
Her hands tightened around his, her breath warm on his mouth, the tremor in her exhale unraveling a thread he’d knotted tightly long ago. He wanted to stay like this, cocooned in candlelight, her pulse under his thumb, the world outside reduced to nothing but rain.
“If the Registry wants to move against you, then we will leave before it can. The Shadow corps are aware. They will help us.”
Sabine’s breath caught. “You would make rebels out of all of them? For my sake?”
He didn’t have to think about the answer. It came to him like second nature. “Yes.” Then, “And so would they, so please , Sabine. Watching Evara die because of me was difficult. But if you were to suffer a similar fate… I’m certain I’d not survive it.”
She traced the line of his jaw, thumb grazing the rough of his unshaven cheek. The contact sent a ripple down his spine, and for a heartbeat, he forgot everything except the fact of her—her smell, her warmth, the living certainty of her.
Sabine lifted on her tiptoes and kissed him.
The touch was so faint at first that he could’ve convinced himself he’d imagined it.
A flicker of her mouth against his, as brief and bright as a match strike.
But their marks reacted before their minds caught up: a fuse running directly from his mouth to his throat and down to the soles of his feet. He jerked away. Searched her face.
Then, he caught her chin, rougher than he meant, and kissed her back.
The blanket slipped from her shoulders, baring the golden lines of her collarbones.
Her pulse fluttered under his hand, and his responded just as fiercely.
Not just his pulse, but the whole latticework of his nerves, each one singing with the same frequency.
Her hands tangled in his hair, pulling him closer, and the next kiss was completely different from the first: open, urgent, both a challenge and a surrender.
Azrian had trained for fifteen cycles to master every urge, every flicker of need.
But the way she pressed against him, the way her breath came in frantic, biting gasps, unmade him.
There was no discipline in it, no calculation, only the animal certainty that if he let go for even a second, he might destroy the whole room.
He pulled her against him, the thin fabric of her nightgown catching on the buttons of his coat.
The skin of her thighs was hot and smooth as glass.
She tasted of tea and salt and lavender.
He wanted to tell her something important, monumental, but his tongue was thick and uncooperative, and anyway, she was already speaking to him in the only language that mattered.
Their marks spiraled out of control, the familiar ache now edged with a pleasure so sharp he thought it might kill him. Every time her mouth found his, the pain receded, replaced by a giddy, overwhelming surge of… what? Hunger, maybe.
Or hope.
He broke the kiss only when his lungs threatened to shut down entirely. He pressed his forehead to hers, gasping for air, and tried to remember how to speak.
She beat him to it. “You’re trembling,” she whispered, and he realized she was right.
He clung to her. “You’re the only person who can unmake Death himself, Lady Vaelros. ”